Woolrich Woolen Mills

Mark McNairy continues to refine his historically inflected collections for Woolrich Woolen Mills. His Fall outing was his most developed to date, and McNairy proclaimed it his favorite yet. If press notes are to be believed, it looked back to the Civil War, the American South, and Sergio Leone's spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Leave it to the bloggers, McNairy's enormously vocal support base, to locate each of those references. More than enough for the common man—good, bad, or ugly—to appreciate that McNairy's historicism is tempered by a healthy appreciation for what looks new and different now.

For Fall, that included contrast-pocket cargos, duffel coats in a seventies digital camouflage print pulled from the archives, and the newspaper-pocket shirt he introduced last season now arriving in an electric yellow quilted version. (Between these shirts and the leather newspaper holders Raf Simons showed at Jil Sander this week, it seems that designers are doing their part to bolster the struggling newsprint industry. Bully.) It's been a suit-heavy week in Milan, and McNairy, a veteran of preppy temple J.Press, is no stranger to tailoring, but that, too, was treated to an unusual spin. He showed a slightly rumpled version of what he called "the new three-piece": jacket, pants, and matching baseball cap.